Charles Rennie Mackintosh&

Timorous Beasties

TEXTILE DESIGN

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) was a famous Scottish designer and architect .

He designed buildings such as The Glasgow School of Art and The Glasgow Tearooms.

Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born in 1868 and died 1928. He created many of the best loved and most influential buildings, furniture and decorative schemes of the early 20th century.

Few designers can claim to have created a unique and individual style that is so instantly recognisable. Famous today as a designer of chairs, Mackintosh was an architect who designed schools, offices, churches, tearooms and homes, an interior designer and decorator, a designer of furniture, metalwork, textiles and stained glass and, in his latter years, a watercolourist.

Excelling in all these areas, Mackintosh left hundreds of designs and a rich volume of work. His distinctive style mixed together elements of Scottish culture and the English Arts and Crafts tradition with the organic forms of Art Nouveau and a drive to be modern. As his work matured Mackintosh employed bolder geometricforms in place of organic-inspired symbolic decoration

Art Nouveaua style of decorative art, architecture, and design prominent in Western Europe and the USA from about 1890 until the First World War and characterized by intricate linear designs and flowing curves based on natural forms.

Art Nouveau - a French school of art and architecture popular throughout Europe in the 1890s to World War 1

Art Nouveau designs are characterized by stylized natural forms and sinuous outlines of such objects as leaves and vines and flowers.

Art Nouveau was a development of the Arts and Crafts movement, with two main strands: one of fluid symmetry and flowing linear rhythms, one of geometrical austerity.

It was called “Art Nouveau” (new art) in France, The movement took its name from La Maison de l'Art Nouveau in Paris, a shop keen to promote modern ideas in art. It was influenced by the Symbolists most obviously in their shared preference for exotic detail, as well as by Celtic and Japanese art. It was brought to a wider audience in 1900 with the Exposition Universelle in Paris. It was popular in the major cities throughout Europe. Each place developed it’s own version of the Art Nouveau style. It was called “Jugendstil” in Germany, and “stile Liberty” in Italy.

From the 1860s, ukiyo-e, Japanese wood-block prints, became a source of inspiration for many European Impressionist painters in France and elsewhere, and eventually for Art Nouveau and Cubism.

Artists were especially affected by the lack of perspective and shadow, the flat areas of strong colour, and the compositional freedom gained by placing the subject off-centre, mostly with a low diagonal axis to the background.

Ukiyo-e, with its curved lines, patterned surfaces, and contrasting voids and flatness of their picture-plane, also inspired Art Nouveau. Some line and curve patterns became graphic clichés that were later found in works of artists from all parts of the world. These forms and flat blocks of colour were the precursors to abstract art in modernism.

Portrait of Père Tanguy by Vincent Van Gogh, an example of Ukiyo-e influence in Western art (1887)

Art Nouveau is characterised by an elaborate ornamental style with sinuous linearity and flowing organic shapes based on plant forms. It can be seen most effectively in the decorative arts, for example interior design, glasswork and jewellery. However, it was also seen in posters and illustration as well as certain paintings and sculptures of the period. Alphonse Mucha poster for Job Cigarettes.

Art Nouveau style is exemplified in the Paris Metro station entrances by Guimard, Tiffany glass, Mackintosh chairs and his Glasgow School of Art, and book designs of Beardsley. Other exponents of Art Nouveau include Gustav Klimt, Antonio Gaudí and René Lalique. Art Nouveau was highly successful all around the world, until it was killed off by the First World War.

Edward Colonna Chair, for L'Art Nouveau Bing, Paris.MATERIALS: Palissander wood, damask upholstery

It has been said often that Art Nouveau interior design is in fact the original modern style of the 20th century, as it was the first style to stop looking back in time for inspiration.

Art Nouveau was influenced by ideas of the natural world and what designers experienced around them, borrowing ideas from nature and reflecting them in magnificent fabrics and wall paper.

From 1880 to 1910, Art nouveau interior design was the height of originality and design excellence. The concept was first on show in Paris, France and then London, UK. It caused a huge fuss as people instantly loved it or loathed it.

The two distinct looks that were commonly used by nouveau artist are rational, linear lines and curves that take on organic shapes. Art Nouveau’s predecessor is the Arts and Crafts style, taking from it the shared love of beautifully hand crafted, quality goods of fine craftsmanship.

The look incorporates stylized flowers, leaves, buds and roots like those shown in the image below. The female form was widely used in the pre-Raphaelite pose with long, flowing hair. Art Deco was also influenced by those elements.

Exotic woods were designed into the incredible marquetry of Art Nouveau interiors and iridescent glass stunned buyers with its sumptuous look and dream like appeal.

One of eleven children, Mackintosh was born in 1868 to Margaret and William Mackintosh, a clerk in the police force. He grew up in Glasgow and from the age of nine attended the Allan Glen’s Institution, a private school for the children of tradesmen and artisans, which specialised in vocational training.

At fifteen Mackintosh began evening classes at Glasgow School of Art and a year later, in 1884, he began a five-year apprenticeship with the Glasgow architects John Hutchins. In 1889 he joined the more eminent firm of Honeyman & Keppie, where he received a traditional Beaux Arts training typical of the period.

The 1890s was a decade of learning and development for Mackintosh, when he continued his architectural training, travelled to Italy, attended and gave lectures, and formed new friendships. These experiences widened his interest in architecture to include the fine and decorative arts.

Among his friends were Francis Newbery, the inspirational director of Glasgow School of Art and his wife Jessie, Herbert McNair, a fellow draughtsman at Honeyman & Keppie and the sisters Margaret and Frances Macdonald, who attended Glasgow School of Art.

Mackintosh, McNair and the Macdonald sisters came to be known as The Four. Together they

designed and exhibited work including posters and furniture. Through them, Mackintosh was

introduced to the broader field of art and in particular to the feminine, symbolic graphic style of the Macdonald sisters. In 1894 they were described

by the press as “the Spook School, a reference to their gothic, elongated, sinuous and feminine

graphic forms based on fabled and mythic themes. Mackintosh married Margaret Macdonald in 1900

and she was to remain his principal collaborator throughout his life.

In 1896 Francis Newbery invited twelve local architects to enter a competition to design a new building for Glasgow School of Art. One of these firms was Honeyman & Keppie, which was almost certainly selected because of Mackintosh’s friendship with Newbery. Honeyman & Keppie won the competition with Mackintosh as designer. This, his first and most important commission, was to seal his future reputation.

Mackintosh was one of the most influential figures of "Art Nouveau" in the United Kingdom. His wife, Margaret Macdonnald, a former student at Glasgow School of art, was deeply involved in their creative life. The Mackintoshes moved to Chelsea in 1915. To improve his meagre income he started designing for the textile industry. Between 1915 and 1923 he produced over 120 designs.

During the FIRST WORLD WAR both Mackintoshes (but mainly CRM) explored a new avenue, producing several hundred designs for printed textiles which they offered for £10 each to various manufacturers. Many were bought by William Foxton and probably put into production, but very little evidence remains today beyond the original watercolour sketches. CRM explored strong colours, bold patterns and modern designs with a new freedom that jumped further than Art Nouveau.

Some designs survive, mostly in the Hunterian, Glasgow – in bright, geometric and sinuous patterns, brilliant and subtle colours. Some derive from Art Nouveau forms, but are reworked and generally bold and sharp geometries and colours that show a move from European influences.

1915 to 1923 Mackintosh produced over 120 textile designs , either patterns based on stylized flowers or more abstract motifs. .

Charles Rennie Mackintosh 1915 Chelsea: Odalisque

Charles Rennie Mackintosh 1915 Chelsea: Flowers and checker works

Orange and purple Charles Rennie Macintosh 1915 Chelsea: Wave pattern Untitled

Tulip and Lattice 1915-23

Rose and Teardrop 1915-23Watercolour sketch for a textile design.Every rose in the repeat of 20 is different. Today different manufacturers roller print this in flat colour similar to that CRM might have expected in 1920, others produce fabric in photo – realistic facsimile of the sketch.

Organic designs such as this reiterate Mackintosh's lifelong interest in plant forms. The tulip was a motif often used in the late textile designs. Here Mackintosh has combined the tulip with a geometric lattice structure. This design was produced during the years the Mackintoshes lived in London, 1915-1923, and is unusually complete in comparison to his other surviving textile designs which do not usually show detailed motifs, repeats and colourways.

Keywords: TEXTILE DESIGNMOTIF

TULIP LATTICE

STYLISED

GEOMETRIC SHAPES